Our life in the foothills of Calaveras County, California. The pond is at the center of everything. In case we should forget, the bullfrogs yell it out all summer long. A noisy place, but home.

Pond!

Thursday, July 10, 2014

The Bone Fence or Interesting; but is it Art?

In five days I'll be off to visit Anke and Wolfgang in Germany. I'm so glad that I decided to see them this summer -- I was very close to putting it off for another year because of feeling completely drained of energy from my hectic teaching year. By the time school let out, all I wanted to do was crawl home and stay there. However, with a bit of rest and time, I realized that getting out to visit people and places I love would be the best remedy for my tired mind and worried heart. So next Tuesday off I soar, away from Frogpond for two weeks.

Naturally there is a lot I must do to prepare for the trip. And just as naturally, I'm not doing any of THAT stuff. Instead, I'm working on very important projects that have absolutely nothing to do with my impending trip. Such as...The Bone Fence.

Some people collect stamps, or shoes, or cookbooks. I collect bones. This is the cheapest hobby I have ever engaged in -- I just keep my eyes open while on walks and when I see a bone lying in the grass or dirt, I take it. As I take many walks, my collection has gradually grown into quite a heap outside the garden gate. Most of the bones came from a dead cow from the neighbor's property which had aged to a bleached white over the years. I developed a routine of picking up and bringing home one bone at a time until, eventually, I had all of the cow (or at least, all that the other animals had left for me). I added a few deer remains and one antler that I found on our back hill.

I've always had an idea to do something "arty" with my "collection" but never got around to it. And so my stack of bones kept growing into a messy sort of hill. However, my impending trip to Germany galvanized me into action and I got them out of the dirt and onto the fence in a single afternoon.

The above picture was taken from outside the garden looking in. Here is Arby, the Welcome sign and my newly wired-up bones. I also added metal hoops that I'd saved and repurposed from two old wine barrels that had rotted away. Wiring bones and hoops is a more difficult task than one might think -- gravity has a way of causing things to slip downwards, sag or fall to the ground. I also struggled to place everything as pleasingly as possible. In the end, I got tired of the whole thing and just wired bones and hoops any which way. Which is probably why I'm a teacher and not an artist.

When I showed my creation to Bruce, he (so rarely at loss for words) said nothing, but just looked. I laughed and told him, "Well, there go the property values!" and he gathered himself together and told me that he liked my bone fence very much and it should stay. I think he feels about it rather like I do -- it's weird, and sort of ugly but also funny and sort of beautiful. So it will indeed stay.

I love how the individual bones can look like faces.

Others look like swooping bats, or birds or manta rays.

Here is a deer skull that, admittedly, needs a little more aging time. The turkey feather embellishment was Bruce's idea.

In all the years living here, I've only found one deer antler. This is it.

The plan is to wire up my new finds as I bring them home from my walks. I'm curious what others will say when they see my strange, macabre fence art. I don't suppose I'd better quit my day job quite yet.

1 comment:

So interesting! I just had to chuckle at your vocation as a bone picker. We are that, too, and have a variety of creature parts tucked away. We spent a year bringing home bones from an elk that was a winter kill. We have a skull collection, as well - skulls from cougar, coyotes, elk, deer, rabbits, cattle, horses but no bear skull yet. I even have a hummingbird skeleton. I think your bone fence is very creative and it might even ward off bad critters!

About Me

My husband and I live in a small house by a small pond that is just past the first and smallest foothill of the mighty Sierra Nevada Mountains of California. Our nearest town has the rather large name of Copperopolis, but the town itself is also very small. During the school year I drive my small car down into the valley to teach 4th grade at – you guessed it – a smallish school. On both a grand and a personal scale, life is too short and too miraculous to be taken for granted. This chronicle of our life here at Frogpond Acres is one way for me to remain mindful and appreciative of the many not-so-small wonders and blessings that surround us.